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Poverty causes hunger, even when food is enough for all
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IFPRI's 2012
Global Hunger Index
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“Decades of effort and rhetoric have failed to eradicate hunger in the world.” This is the emphatic and harsh conclusion of the Global Hunger Index. In 2000, more than a hundred presidents, kings, prime ministers and ministers from all over the world signed the Millennium Declaration in which they promised to spare no effort to, among other things, “cut by half (by 2015) the proportion of people suffering from hunger.” This goal will not be reached. More than a billion people will go to bed hungry tonight. There are more hungry people today than there were at the start of the century. The proportion has fallen because total world population has increased, but it has not fallen enough.
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Post-2015 development agenda must include rights, equity and environment
The High Level Panel appointed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to consider the post-2015 development agenda is opening in London the discussion on poverty eradication. Its members should have in mind the strong pronouncement of the civil society organizations: in a previous global online consultation they demanded not to leave the human rights and the environment aside in the fight against poverty, and to address the growing inequality, among other requirements.
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Land Grabbing: From Finland to Mozambique, and back again
"Land grabs" in the Global South have caused much debate and concern during the last couple of years, especially since the global food price crisis of 2008. Kepa, a platform for Finnish NGOs interested in development issues and focal point of Social Watch in that European country, held a discussion on the issue this month. Tuomo Alhojärvi wrote a report on the debate for Kepa’s website.
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Generic medicines make their way
Developing countries are taking actions to promote cheaper medicines through compulsory licensing for the benefit of their populations, with Indonesia being the latest case. In one of his more recent columns The Star, one of the leading Malaysian newspapers, Martin Khor, executive director of South Centre, analyzes the current situation in the whole world.
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Canada: Public liquor retail system is better, both economically and socially
The province of Saskatchewan’s public liquor retail system is superior to both Alberta and British Columbia’s private scheme in terms of price, revenue generation and mitigation of social harm, concluded in a new report the Saskatchewan office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA, one of the focal points of Social Watch in that North American country) and the Parkland Institute.
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